The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Our Emotions and the Social Hierarchy – Part Two

Episode Date: March 8, 2020

A Jordan B. Peterson "12 Rules for Life" lecture (Our Emotions and the Social Hierarchy – Part Two), recorded in Brisbane, Australia on February 17, 2019. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.butcherbox.com/jbp http://trybasis.com/jordan/

Welcome to episode 49 of the Jordan B Peterson podcast. I'm Michaela Peterson, Jordan's daughter. No super new updates on our end. Dad is still recovering. We're still getting our sunshine in Florida. We've had a lot of family come down to visit. It's been a nice break. I hope you enjoyed this episode.

It's called Our Emotions and the Social Hierarchy Part 2 recorded in Brisbane, Australia on February 17, 2019. Let me tell you about basis. My dad and I have been using NAD treatments and have seen some major results. The LECM is a health company that's at the forefront of NAD supplementation. They translate breakthrough scientific advancements in aging research into health products you can buy right from their website. Their flagship product is Basis. It works by giving you more NAD and activating what scientists call our longevity genes. Basis works at the cellular level and many of the benefits of increased NAD are things you won't feel including enhanced mitochondrial function, active longevity genes, and improved DNA repair. However, you can also experience higher energy, better sleep,

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lecture. If things aren't laying themselves out in front of you, the way that is necessary for you to live a full and engaged life and not be cynical and bitter and twisted and cruel and vengeful and disappointed and all of that, it's just possible that you're not amen at the right thing. And man, that is a question, that is a question worth asking. Well, it's the question people do ask. It's like, well, what's the purpose of life?

Well, it's the same question. What should I aim at? Those are the same questions. And if what you're aiming at is producing nothing but unrequited misery for you and everyone else, and it's a downhill bloody spiral into something approximating hell, then there is some possibility that you should think

that perhaps your aim is off. So, and I don't wanna overplay my hand on that either too, because I know perfectly well that, if you're suffering, if you're depressed, if you're miserable, you might be, you might just, it might be a consequence of really bad luck. Like, people get sick, and good people get sick, everyone knows that, good people, they get sick,

and they die, and so you can't say, well, if you're miserable and sick, right? Everyone knows that. You know, good people, they get sick and they die. And so you can't say, well, if you're miserable and sick, it's because there's something, you know, bad about you. Because then that would be the case for everyone, always, whenever they get ill, and you could just blame ill people, it's like, well, it's, there's your right that you're sick because you're a bad person.

Happens a lot actually with ill people, you know, and it's an unfortunate thing. So I know there's an element of chance to all this, and I don't want to downplay that, you know, we are dust in the wind, to use a terrible cliche from a 70s rock song. We're blow and hither and thither by events that are somewhat beyond our control, but that's still not the point. The point is that to a large degree, you can determine the manner in which the world manifests itself to you by changing your aim.

And so then that opens up. That opens up the entire domain of philosophy. Think what good is philosophy? And people think that all the time. What good is philosophy? It's like, hey, philosophy is about value. Well, what uses value? Well, value determines your aim. Well, what uses value? Well, value determines your aim.

Well, who cares what your aim is? Well, your aim determines the manner in which the world lays itself out to you emotionally. Well, who cares about that? No one says that. The argument stops there because no one, especially no one who's been seriously hurt or seriously depressed, like in pain, no one ever says, oh, well, who cares about that? Because if you can say that about your pain, all that means is you actually haven't been

in pain. Because if you're in enough pain, you will not say that. That's for sure. So you need to know what to aim at. So now you aim at something, you've got a goal, and then you see that you're making progress towards the goal. That's a good thing. That makes you happy.

It actually, technically, there's a system, dopamine system, neurochemical system, same system, by the way, that cocaine and methamphetamine and opiates activate, which is why people like to take those drugs. And it tells you that you're moving forward in the manner that you should be according to the dictates of your plan. Doesn't necessarily tell you whether you have a good plan. That's a more complicated problem. Because who knows if you have a good plan.

But one thing that you could know is that a plan is better than no plan. That's a really useful thing to know, especially if you're kind of drifting. It's like, well, I'm going to find myself. It's like, no, just pick something and move towards it. And as you move towards it, you're going to succeed and fail specifically. And then you're going to learn something about success specifically. And you're going to learn something about success specifically, and you're going to learn something about failure specifically, and then you can learn what you use to fix your plan. So a stupid plan is way better than no plan, and you're likely to have a stupid plan,

or at least to be able to make one, so that's good news for everybody. You can make a stupid plan, and so I would say, make a stupid plan. And then implement it, not any stupider that it has to be. You could think about it a little bit, but then implement it. And have your successes and failures along the way, and learn from them. And then you can re-jag the goal.

You can move the target. Now, that's fine. That's part of the game. It doesn't have to be fixed. It's a movable target. And maybe what you're trying to do is to move the target to an ever better place. So you're moving towards a target.

And at the same time, you're moving the target. And you're trying to move the target towards something like an ultimate ideal. You're trying to find out what that ultimate ideal is. And part of the way you figure that out is by moving towards a target and by learning about success and failure along the way, because then you can inform yourself with regards to what might constitute a reasonable aim.

And so that's the reason to go out in the world and make some mistakes, you know, and then you're going to. And so it's okay to make the mistakes. It's not so okay not to learn from them, because then you make the mistakes again. That seems pointless. And so you're moving towards wherever you're going and it's working and so you get some positive emotion. You get some motivation from this dopaminergic system that adds zest to life. It adds interest and engagement and meaning to life. It pulls you into life.

And so that's worth thinking about. I would say, because if you think about it, you know, you have might wonder about whether or not you should be engaged in life. And then if all of a sudden you're doing something, and because you're doing it, you get engaged in life, then it seems like that might be the very definition of a good thing. It's evidence. The engagement is evidence that you're actually doing a good thing, a good thing. It's evidence. The engagement is evidence that you're actually doing a good thing, a worthwhile thing in life with all its suffering and misery and brutality.

It's like, you've got a pathway, you've got a name, you're moving forward, you're engaged. Excellent, your nervous system, very deep down, this dopaminergic system. It's associated with a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. It's a really, really old part of the brain. It's not some new thing that popped up like 15,000 years ago.

It's ancient. It's there to orient you in the world. It's part of the instinct for meaning that I talked about in chapter, I think it's chapter seven, do what is meaningful and not what is expedient. It's a deep, deep instinct and way down, and way down in your psychophysiological structure, not as far down as the serotonin system, but like next level up. And so if it's saying, hey man, you're on the right track, it's like, that's worth noticing.

It's worth noticing. Now you can criticize it out of existence. You can question your aim continually. It's one of the, what would you call it? Dangerous of our capacity to abstract, but if you're a smart person who doubts, you also might be smart enough now and then to doubt your doubt, and just to notice,

and to pay attention, and something I explain to my clinical clients and my students often, it's like if you're trying to put your life together watch yourself for a couple of weeks like you don't know who you are Because if your life isn't together, you don't know who you are So just watch yourself like you don't know who you are and notice now and then if you're engaged in something And you know and you kind of have to wake up because if you're engaged in it, you don't quite notice right because you're engaged in it But afterwards you might think, Oh, I just spent an hour,

and I didn't notice that it was an hour. I was in it. That's good. You're in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing. There's something about that that's right. And maybe you're not in good shape, and that happened to you like 15 minutes once in two weeks. It's like that's pretty dismal and the rest of the time it was wretched. It's like, okay, fine, well maybe in the next two weeks you can see if you can do it for half an hour. And then maybe for 45 minutes. And then maybe for an hour, right? You can start practicing

being in that place. That's a very useful thing to learn. It's like, oh, look, I'm interested in what I'm doing. I'm engaged in it. Now, how did I get here? Where am I exactly? And how did I get here? And how could I stay here? How could I be here more often? Those are all questions you have to ask yourself.

Well, that's the beginning of philosophy as well. And you think, well, why bother? And the answer is, well, you want to be engaged in your life? Well, why would you? Well, it's positive. It's analgesic, it fights off pain, it quells anxiety, it gives you purpose, it's good for you, practically speaking, generally speaking,

if you have an aim and you're moving forward, you're moving forward to something that's psychologically valuable, but also practically valuable. If it's really a good aim, also it's good for you now, tomorrow, the next day, the next month, because you're smart enough to generally, smart enough, to calibrate yourself so that things that are really bad for you don't have that engaging quality.

Now, it's not perfect, especially if you've messed yourself up psychologically by lying to yourself in all sorts of different ways, but it's still not a bad orienting system. And then the other thing you can also notice is, well, when you're doing things that make you feel really awful, by your own standards, it's like, oh, look, I just did something, had some interaction with someone, and now I feel awful. It's like, well, maybe you could not do that. Whatever it was, you might have to think it through. What were the routines that constituted that ill-advised set of actions? And maybe you're going

to have to think really deeply about it, you know, because God only knows how much of your personality structure is involved in that error. But if it made you wretched, it made you feel like life wasn't worth living, then that might be a hint that that wasn't a good thing made you wretched, it made you feel like life wasn't worth living, then that might be a hint that that wasn't a good thing to do. And so then maybe you could start doing more of the things that make you engaged, and less of the things that make you hate life. And that's worthy of practice, let's say. You might think about that as a fundamental ethical requirement, or I would say it's a fundamental form of religious meditation.

That's a better way of thinking about it. And so then you're on the path. That's the straight and narrow path. It's like, I'm moving forward. I've got name, I'm moving forward. As I move forward, I'm engaged. It's bloody well worth walking down this pathway. And on the left, to me, is terror and horror and hell

and pain, and I'm avoiding that. And to the right of me is terror and horror and hell and pain and I'm avoiding that. And to the right of me, perhaps, is ego and arrogance and the things that can get out of control with regards to positive emotion, but I've got that balance right. I'm on the right pathway. Okay, and now we think about what might constitute the right pathway. Well, I can tell you a pathway that works for me to some degree. So this is a value structure that's characteristic of me, of things I do.

I type, because I write, and so that's pure action, to type letters, I type words, I type phrases, I type sentences, I type paragraphs, I type chapters, I write books, and then people, and then I talk about the books, chapters, I write books, and then people, and then I talk about the books, and people read the books, and the reason that they can understand the books is because we're a lot the same. There's a lot of things that have to be the same

about you and me before I can write a book that you can read, and I have to be able to take them for granted. And so the reason I'm telling you that is because there's an important relationship between my hierarchy of values and your hierarchy of values, if we're going to be able to communicate and if we're going to be able to occupy the same place at the same time. So if I'm writing a book like 12 Rules for Life and it has a discussion about what constitutes the good in it, then I have to start with the presupposition

that we share some fundamental intuition about what constitutes the good or my words will fall on deaf ears. Okay, and it's partly because, and then this is maybe the relationship between the social world and the psychological world that I wanted to talk about. As I build up my hierarchy of skill and ability, perception and emotional regulation, you know, from slicing carrots upwards, you know, I'm a, I'm a good cook, I'm a good parent, maybe

I'm a good man, maybe I'm a good man, maybe I'm a good person. You know, all of those cover a broader and broader range of abstractions and abilities. There has to be a relationship between that and what other people think. You know, because, look, if you're, your kid, you teach your kid to set the table. And then he goes to someone else's house and sets the table and he gets a swat. It's like, well, what's the consequence of that? Well, the consequence of that is that the kid is going to be unhappy. Well, why? Well, it's because the kid did a lot of work building up all those separate skills to undertake that complex activity. And it really is a complex activity. You don't have a robot at home

that sets the table. You have a cell phone and it's smart, but it can't set the damn table. It's complicated to do that sort of thing. And so your kid had built this complicated neurological structure as a consequence of reward, primarily, because reward helps build neurological structures, built this whole structure.

And now what he's hoping is that all the work that went into building that structure is something that other people will appreciate as well. So that's where you need the isomorphism between the interpsychic structure, the psychological structure and the social structure, which is why we have to have a shared social reality. This is partly why I think the postmodernists went off the rails so badly with their insistence that

the world was only language. It's like it is in some sense very important that you construe the world the same way I do, even though there's a very wide range of ways of consturing the world. We come to some negotiated agreement about what's good and what isn't. So that when I do things that I think are good, you also think they're good, so that I get rewarded for my good behavior, and I get, let's say, punished for my bad behavior, because that's often a relief as well, by the way. And so we have to have our own internal structure of values

that we're pursuing, because otherwise, we don't have any meaning in our life, and that's no damn good. And then it has to be nested inside a shared structure of values that's similar so that when we act out what we have learned to be good, we're treated by the world as if that's good. And then we have peace. That's the definition of a functioning political system. We've organized a moral game, a very complex one. And then we master it through reciprocal interaction with one another. We internalize it so that it regulates our emotions. Then we act it out in the world, and if there's a concordance between the way we act it out and the way the world responds, then we're okay. Because there's nothing more disturbing to you than to act out a high-order moral good.

Let's say you're working really hard at your job, for example, and you're hoping for a promotion. And let's say you deserve a promotion by all reasonable standards, and then you don't get one. It's taken, it's given to, I don't know, given to the boss's mistress or some damn thing. It's given to someone who doesn't deserve it by the canonical rules of the moral game. All it does is devastate you. The reason that it devastates you is because it disrupts the relationship between the internal moral hierarchy that you've built and the collective hierarchy and everything you have is staked on maintaining that isomorphism. And it's the same even in intimate relationships.

If you do something good for your wife or your husband, you go out of the way, maybe to make a nice meal, and they come home and they punish you arbitrarily for some tiny fault, maybe with the dinner, it's very disheartening. And the reason is it it violates your faith, first of all, in your own intracellic hierarchy, second in the structure of the social hierarchy and third in the match between them, and it's the match between them that's really important. We do not like mismatch between what we expect,

especially in terms of reward, especially when we've really worked at it and what we're delivered. Right? And so that's partly a complicated explanation of how we regulate our emotions. You know, we regulate them by aiming, that's important. We regulate them by walking the straight narrow path, but then we also regulate them by being fortunate enough to be in a situation where if we walk the straight and narrow path properly, then other people respond positively to us. And then you have this lovely harmony, and it's a right way of thinking about it. It's a musical way of thinking about it. There's you composed of this very unbelievably complex nested set of patterns, beautiful patterns that you spent forever working on. And then they're nested inside a social structure that's also patterned in the same way. And those are working harmoniously together like a dance. And that's perfect.

It's the meeting of the individual with society. And it's the secret to harmonious emotional regulation. And more into cooperation, and to proper competition, and to movement forward practically in the world. All of that. And so, OK, well, I'll close with just a description of what a hierarchy might look like, and a brief description of how it is

that you calculate when you make a major mistake. So, my hierarchy would be something like this. I type letters, I type words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, I sequence the paragraphs, I make chapters, I write books. It's all coherently laid out towards some higher order aim, all of that. And the aim is, as far as I'm concerned, to share my clinical knowledge and to educate people. And that makes sense because I'm a clinician and a researcher and a professor.

And so if I was going to do that, I've decided I'm going to do that. So that's what I'm doing. And hopefully that's a good thing. And hopefully people respond to it as if it's a good thing, because then that's a good thing for me, and it's a good thing for them. And so that seems to be like the very definition of a good thing.

And I'm trying to set things straight, right? I'm trying to set myself straight by writing carefully. I'm trying to set the culture straight by saying what I believe to be the case. I'm trying to set other individuals straighter by communicating with them. I'm trying to ensure that we can live more harmoniously in our culture and in the world. And you think, well, those are good things to have at the outermost reaches of your value hierarchy. My friend of mine was talking to me about brick layers the other day, and he's trying to restructure a major company at the moment, and we were talking about how to motivate people.

He said, well, let's say you're a brick layer. It's like, you know, one damn brick after another. How are you going to be excited about that? Well, let's say you're a medieval brick layer, right? And it's 1500, and you're working in one of the great, you're working in one of the great early Renaissance cities in Europe and it isn't a wall you're building, it's a cathedral.

It's gonna take 350 years and why are you doing that? Well, it's for the ultimate glory of God, whatever that means. And so you're not putting one brick down after another. It's like you're involved in this unbelievably complicated moral structure that stretches, really stretches all the way up to heaven itself, so to speak. And each of your minor actions, you know, your local actions is imbued with the spirit of that entire moral structure. Well, that's a philosophy. It's like, well, do you have a meaning in life?

What's the meaning of life? Well, hopefully it isn't just un-requited, suffering and malevolence. We could dispense with that as much as possible. That might be a good start. But then to aim high, well, that seems to be reasonable. To aim as high as you can. And we've laid out things that could be aimed at.

You could constrain yourself. You know, there are things you're not doing and things that you shouldn't be doing. You stop doing the things that you shouldn't be doing and start doing the things you should be doing. That's a good start. Wake up enough so that you can set the structures around you right. It's your moral obligation as a citizen,

your responsibility, and your divine duty, I would say, from our cultural perspective, because in the West, everyone is regarded as a citizen, your responsibility, and your divine duty, I would say, from our cultural perspective, because in the West, everyone is regarded as a sovereign individual, the fate of the state, a sovereign individual on whose shoulders rests the fate and the health of the state, right? That's the fundamental presupposition. Otherwise, well, why do you get to vote? To just to make a mistake? Well, no, that's not it. You're supposed to be awake so that the ship of state continues to move forward in the appropriate direction and somehow we've decided that's up to you. Why?

Well, because we've also decided, hey man, you can do it and not only that, no one else can. And so that's something to know and might be something to take seriously. It's like, who knows what the hell you'd be if you got your act together? And I think you would be like, you'd be a force to contend with, you know?

You'd have constrained the malevolence of in your own soul. And you'd have started to take advantage of the potential that's around you and to build yourself advantage of the potential that's around you, and to build yourself out of that potential into God only knows what, you know? And then maybe with that wisdom, you can set the structures around you in order,

at least more in order than they are, or maybe disintegrate them a bit when they need it and to restructure them so they're even better than they are. And you can push back nature in its horrible form and invite it forward in its positive form and make things better for you and for your family and for your community. And you can approach the unknown itself and you can explore that, the potential that's out there. And you can bring back the treasure that's part of the unknown potential. And you can distribute that. And that is what you can do. And then

only that's what you need to do because you need to have a meaning in your life, a name, a value structure that's of sufficient potency and magnitude to justify the limitations and the trouble that life constitutes, right? It's no, this is no trivial business that we're involved in, right? We're all in this up to our next. Literally, it's a mortal game. You're all in. And to play it wrong is to risk suffering and hell. And I'm not talking about afterlife.

I'm not talking about something metaphysical. You can generate plenty of hell right here around you, plenty, an unlimited amount. And so you can move towards that direction or you can move towards a positive direction. And you can orient yourself. And you know, you can know, you can learn. This is why the postmodernists are so incorrect. It's like, look, you need a name. You need an aim. You cannot organize

the way you look at the world without a name. It's not optional. And then the question is, well, what should the aim be? Well, probably not to radically increase the amount of misery and suffering that you experience in everyone else. I mean, maybe you want to go that route, but and people do, but I think they only do when they become bitter and they give up, you know, they and they make mistakes, they know they're making, right? It's conscious decision to go down that route. It's not like they think that's okay to begin with. Their aim is wrong. It's like straight out your aim. So there's an old idea. This idea of sin, sin is a word that was derived from a Greek word, hamartia, and hamartia is an archery term, and it means to miss the target. And so you think, well, how can you miss the target? Well, you have no weapon. Well, then you miss the target.

You have no target. You have no aim. Well, then you miss the target. You don't pick up your bow. Well, then you miss the target. You don't draw it back. Then you miss the target. You don't practice and miss many times, right?

Because you have to do that to develop the skill to hit the target. So you're not willing to take the risk to miss. You do none of that. And so you miss the target. And that's the sin. And then you miss your life. And then what happens around you is that, well, there's far more hell than there has to be. And there's much less heaven than there could be. And it's on you. And that's part of your, what would you say? Your divine value, let's say, that sets you aside along with everyone else as something, someone, some being, that even the law itself has to respect intrinsically.

And it's marked out in our culture by the sovereignty that you possess, and the notion that there's something in you that's made in the image of God, something that can confront the unknown and to create habitable order out of chaos and potential, and to do that properly. And that's all true as far as I can tell, and it's all necessary to know. It's coded in the deepest stories that are at the base of our culture. And we're in danger of not understanding them

and not believing them. And it's a big mistake because they're heavy and profound and weighty and fundamental and necessary. Because you have to stand on something that's solid or everything is sand and you fall in and you're done and so is everything around you. Well, so that's what was the name of the talk. What was the name of the talk? I don't even remember what the hell I titled it now. Part of it is, yes, the relationship between your internal psychological structure and the social world.

That's what's part of it. And then the manner by which you estimate magnitude of error, I suppose that's the last thing I should say. You have a value hierarchy and we already describe what that is, ranging from the trivial motor actions that you undertake to the highest order aims, what makes you upset. Your determination of how far up in the hierarchy, the error you have made has disrupted things. You know, so you tell your kid, you didn't put that spoon on the table quite right. And they're a little upset, you know, but it's whatever. You twist the spoon, it's fixed. Or you say, you know, you're a rotten kid and you've always been a rotten kid and I don't see that there's much hope for

you in the future. It's like, well, what people do that when they argue with people they love, and they do that quite a bit. It's like they're taking them out at the highest level of their value hierarchy, right? And that makes people really upset, and the reason for that is, well, it wipes out the whole map. And so there's also a relationship, and this is an interesting thing to know, between how upset you get emotionally, and how important it is, how important the thing that you're pursuing is that's being criticized. And it's, oh, and with a practical note, you know, if you're arguing with someone,

here's something you can think about. You want them to change their behavior. The first thing you wanna do is, you wanna sort of pat them on the head and say, you weren't horrible all the time in the past, and you're not horrible all the time now, and you probably won't be horrible all the time in the future. So we'll just get that out of the way. But there's this small thing that you do that could use little improvement.

And here's how you can improve it. And I would be satisfied and happy with that. If you tried it, would you be willing to? And then they improve incrementally. And over time, maybe if you're very careful with such things and you don't do them too often, and you also allow the other person to do that to you as well, then you get incremental improvements

without taking chopping people off at the knees, so to speak, when you're criticizing the way that they're behaving. All right, well, how to conclude all that. You can't look at the world without a name. Literally, you can't even perceive it. You cannot regulate your emotions without a name. The better your aim, the more precise your aim,

the more elevated your aim. You remember in Pinocchio, when Jepetto wants to turn Pinocchio into a real boy, he wishes on a star. It's a strange thing, eh? But everybody just accepts it. It's like, well, yeah, if you've got a puppet, you just made a puppet, and you want to turn it into a boy, the logical thing to do is open the window and wish on a star.

Everyone knows that. It's like, none of that makes the least bit of sense, obviously, except metaphorically, but we do understand it because we can watch that, and it makes sense. It's something magical about it. And there is something magical about it. Because the truth of the matter is,

is that if you want to transform something that's nothing but a wooden-headed puppet into something that's a fully functional autonomous, moral, autonomous individual, then what you do is you elevate your eyes above the horizon to the highest point of light that you can perceive and you aim at that. And that works. And that that works for you and it works for your partner and it works for your children and it works for the world. Thank you very much. Okay, well let's get to the serious things here first. 105 of you think that this is of crucial importance. Are you subscribed to PewDiePie? Yes, as a matter of fact, he's been fighting with some company for dominance of YouTube.

Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I subscribed to him a long while back and tweeted it and hopefully got some other people to subscribe to him too because what the hell. So all right,, there we go. Um, there was one here, I thought it was quite a... Oh, who would wear it when in a barren-knuckle brawl between you, Ben Shapiro, and Justin Trudeau? Well, Ben's a malevolent little creature, so he might have some dirty tricks up his sleeve, but he doesn't have much of a reach on him. Trudeau, Trudeau, he can box. So he'd probably get me on technical skills,

and I'm quite a bit older, but I think I'd get up a lot of times. So, well, hopefully it won't come to that. But I tell you, there is part of me that thinks it would be interesting. All right, all right. So, and there was 137 of you who thought that one was worth discussing, so that's good. So is the sole purpose of religious ideas to propagate the species? No, it's not the sole purpose. We discussed that a lot today. The sole purpose of religious ideas, the sole purpose,

first of all, the questioner assumes that there is a sole purpose, and I don't think that that's accurate. So you want to be careful about reducing something complex to a single explanation. That's generally the purview of ideologues. They have one idea and it just covers the world. And the world is a little bit too complicated to be covered by one idea, unfortunately.

The purpose of religious ideas, as far as I can tell, is to remind us who we are. You know, we don't live that long, right? And we're really complicated. And it's not easy to learn how to be a person. You know, I mean, it takes you like 40 years before you can learn to be a person enough so that you can get out of your mother's basement.

So, it's hard. That's half your life before. Well, maybe not 40, but certainly sometimes. It takes a long time to learn how to be a human being and we're very, very complicated. We're way more complicated than we can understand. You know, and we've been watching each other for a long time, watching ourselves,

telling stories about ourselves, trying to draw some wisdom from our self observations, to teach to our children, into our grandchildren, and so forth. And we've codified them in all sorts of strange ways in these memorable stories, fairy tales and myths and religious stories, all of those things. And what are they, therefore? They're there to remind us who we are,

because we need to know who we are. And you know, we talked about that a little bit tonight. I believe the notion that I believe the most important idea that's ever been generated is the idea that men and women are made in the image of God. I think that a culture that doesn't, that isn't predicated on that belief, knowingly or unknowingly, and better knowingly, is doomed to absolute catastrophe. Because there's no reason to assume

that there isn't something about us that's of transcendent value. I mean, if for no other reason than the fact of our consciousness, you know, like here we are, we're aware of what there is. And it isn't even obvious that there could be what there is if there wasn't something that's aware of it. And so our very awareness is plays an integral role in the fact of being itself. You know, in metaphysics aside, it's hard to see that anything could be more vital than that, more important than that. And then it isn't only that we apprehend reality, you know, and therefore give it, give it

shape merely by our perceptions. It's also clearly the case that we partake in it's shaping. And we call ourselves on that. You know, you know, you know, you know that you feel guilty and ashamed when you're not doing what you could be doing, when you're not living up to your potential. When you're not making the most of what's offered to you. You understand at a very deep level that you're breaking, there's no other way of saying it. You're breaking a divine commandment. You're offered this unbelievably rich possibility, and it's there for you to grapple with. And you say, well, I don't believe in such things that in the divinity of humanity, or in divinity itself, or in the divine for that matter,

but you can't fool yourself with that kind of argumentation. It doesn't stop you from feeling guilty and ashamed and worthless and disappointed and frustrated and angry and vengeful at the fact that you're wasting your life and you're noticing it and that you're making yourself much less than you could be and that you're making things around you worse for everyone else. And like perhaps there's a psychopath or two in the audience who just doesn't give a damn and who is focused only on instantaneous gratification for their most primordial impulses this moment, right?

But it's not a sustainable mode of being and it's very rare. And so, the purpose of religious ideas But it's not a sustainable mode of being, and it's very rare. And so, the purpose of religious ideas is to wake us up. It's to remind us who we are. It's to remind us that we're imbued with a spirit that can be best described in some sense as immortal. It's the spirit that allows all of us to be conscious, that we all participate in simultaneously, that gives rise to the world and shapes it.

And then to alert us to the vital importance of the responsibility that goes along with that. Because I do believe that we shape the world. We move it towards heaven or we move it towards hell. And we do that with every conscious decision we make. And it moves in the direction that we determine. And so that's what religious stories are there to remind us of. 50% of Queensland police are now required to be women.

As a bloke applying, how do I speak intelligently and effectively into this situation? What percentage of Queensland police are now currently women? Is it like 20% or 10% or does anybody know? Is it a low percentage? It's what? It's five. Okay, so this basically means that as a bloke applying,

you don't have a hope and hell, right? Which is why 200 people thought this was an important question. Well, as far as I'm concerned, it's like, what the hell are you sitting around for? It's time for some political action. There's no excuse for this whatsoever. There's no excuse whatsoever for equality of outcome measures. They're ideological to the core, and they're very oddly applied.

It's like, what percentage of women are bricklayers? I know I talked about bricklayers already tonight, but it's a good example. I went on the US, if you go on this statistical site that's operated by the US government, you can look at occupations by gender. And it's an interesting thing to do. Here's an interesting thing. You know what the most common occupation for women back in the 1950s was secretary. You know what the most common occupation for women is now?

It's secretary. They don't call them secretaries now. It's usually executive assistant or something like that. And that may indicate some elevation, genuine elevation and status, but fundamentally, the most common occupation hasn't changed in what's that, 70 years. So that's pretty interesting. Brick layers, 99.9% of brick layers are men. Okay, so, and then it's the same for like heavy duty construction equipment operators.

And people who are working with heavy machine-meat, tend to be men, people who are building things, especially outside tend to be men, overwhelmingly so. Far more even than engineers. There's a fair number of female engineers. It's like, what are we going to do here? We're going to enforce gender equality of outcome across the board. Sex equality of outcome across the board. Is that the theory? And how are we going to do that? Exactly. Where are we going to just do it, hit miss? It's like, oh well, it's policeman this year. Well, how about brick layers? It's like, what do we pass a law like tomorrow that now 50% of brick layers have to be women? It doesn't bloody well matter if the women want to be brick layers. That's irrelevant. Who says anything about want?

It's like the only reason that women don't want to be bricklayers is because they've internalized their misogyny, right? Well, that's the standard answer for that sort of gender inequality, and like, and where is it going to stop? So, I think I've thought for a long time that the left can go too far, and I think that if you don't think that the left can go too far, then your head is so far stuck down in the sand that you're, that I need an ending for that metaphor. I was thinking about something far ruder and just made it polite. Anyways, I guess that's the ending to it. Obviously, the left can go too far.

The 20th century is a testament to that. Then, as well, is a testament to that. Okay, so when does the left go too far? Because the left isn't particularly interested in answering that question. And I would say the left goes too far when they insist upon equality of outcome legislation. Now equality of opportunities is a different thing because I think that if you have any sense, imagine that you're just greedy and self-centered and that you want the most for you. So we won't be too optimistic about your motivations. And I don't think that most people are like that, by the way.

I think that people are by and large, pretty good at reciprocal interactions, and they do like to have nice things for themselves, but they're often hard on themselves, but they care about the people they love and they care about their families, and they're pretty good at reciprocal interaction with other people too, so I don't think we are just innately selfish to the core. It doesn't work. But let's assume you are for a moment. Well, and then let's assume that, you know, there's

a bunch of things you don't know how to do and there's some people out there who have some talent that might be able to do them, and if they did them, then you'd get to benefit. You know, like you don't know how to make an iPhone, well some of you might, not the whole thing, but some people know how to make an iPhone, and you get to have one. And so stopping someone who could make an iPhone from making one for some arbitrary reason because of their sex or their ethnicity or their race just seems completely counterproductive.

And it's pretty obvious if you look around the world and you look at countries that are developing economically, here's one good indicator, you know, the countries that have, there's a very powerful relationship between the rights granted to women and the economic viability of a given country. It's very tightly associated. So that's quite cool, because it seems to indicate, well, maybe openness to the participation

of women in traditional societies is also an indicator of openness to the new, you know, to the novel. And so that's a good predictor of economic success. Or maybe it's that women have 50% of the talent, and we could use the damn talent, so how about we invite them into play too? That seems perfectly reasonable, and the same goes for, as I said, for ethnicity and for race. And so I think you have to be a damn fool, not to open up the hierarchies to those who are competent, right, to the maximal possible degree,

and that it's an error not to do that. But to insist that the outcome is the same, it's like, it's so, it's vile, as far as I'm concerned, for a variety of reasons. The first reason is, there's no indication It's vile as far as I'm concerned for a variety of reasons. The first reason is there's no indication that any attempt to do that in the 20th century ended up in any other manner than catastrophe. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is think it through. Think it through. It's like, okay, 50% of every occupation has to be men and women. Okay, you're really willing to do that, are you? And we could start with brick layers. It's like, how are you gonna do that? You're gonna start forcing girls when they're like 13 to learn to lay bricks?

And how are you gonna force them to do that? Because maybe they're not interested. I can tell you something that's quite interesting about the STEM fields and women. So as societies become more egalitarian, so their equality of opportunity legislation is more widespread and arguably more effective. And so that would be in countries like Australia, but more particularly in countries like the Scandinavian countries, because they've taken it farther than anywhere else. Fewer women go into the STEM fields.

Fewer, not more. And so if you rank order countries by how free women are, there's a negative relationship with how probable it is that they'll go into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Now, and the evidence for that is very, very strong, by the way. This isn't just a few casual studies.

These are large-scale international studies with tens of thousands of participants replicated multiple times by researchers who did not expect to find that nor want it. So it's reliable. Okay, so why? Well, there's a bunch of different theories. One is that the average IQ of men and women is the same, and that's quite clear, but the male curve is flatter than the female curve, and that's what they call that, the enhanced male variability hypothesis, which is almost now become impossible to publish on because it's politically incorrect. And what it suggests is that there are more men at the very upper end of the intelligence distribution and more men at the very lower end. And that explains some things

like why there are far more boys, for example, who have learning disabilities than there are girls. And there's some evidence that men are more neurologically vulnerable than women because they're more specialized neurologically. And the advantage to that is this enhanced variability, but the disadvantage is the specialization makes them less robust and resilient neurologically. Be that as it may. That's one possibility.

And I think there's a fair bit of evidence for that. And it's often the case that differences at the extreme, even if there aren't differences in the middle, differences at the extreme actually make a big difference. You know, because like, let's say you're gonna be an engineer, maybe one person in to be an engineer, maybe one person in 100 is an engineer, and you have to be really interested in gadgets

to be an engineer. You know, you have to be more interested than 99 out of 100 people to be an engineer. And there's not that many people that are like that. And most of them happen to be men. Now, people have criticized the male variability hypothesis because they've looked at the performance of girls in mathematics in junior high school.

And it turns out that girls do pretty much as well as boys do in mathematics in junior high at the upper end. And so those would be the people you'd expect to go into the STEM fields, right? Because they have the intellectual ability for it. But what you see is that the women who have high mathematical ability also tend to have high verbal ability. Whereas the men that have high mathematical ability tend to have less high verbal ability. And so one of the things that implies is that the women who have high mathematical ability have more vocational choice.

And so there's statistically less likely to go into the STEM fields. So that's kind of an interesting, no one expected that. So that's kind of an interesting observation. And then there's another observation too that's also extraordinarily germane. There's a variety of ways of looking at the psychological differences and similarities between men and women, and the first thing that you might want to know is that men and women are more similar than they are different on all the personality dimensions. So the overlap is quite strong. The biggest differences are, there's five personality

dimensions. I mentioned them, extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness. The biggest differences are in neuroticism. Women are higher in negative emotion, and that kicks in at puberty, because it's not the case for boys and girls. And they're higher in agreeableness, which is partly why there are far more men in prison. Which is another thing we might think about.

It's like, what is that? Is that gender discrimination? Precisely? No, I'm bloody well dead serious about this. I went to a NATO conference 25 years ago, and there were a group of female scientists there who claimed that the psychiatric diagnostic criteria for childhood conduct disorder should be revamped,

because there were far more boys diagnosed with childhood conduct disorder than there were girls. And that's the precursor by the way to adult anti-social personality disorder or to criminality. And the way that you equate it by sex, if you want to do that, is you get rid of the violence. So one of the criteria for childhood conduct disorder is kicking, hitting, biting, and stealing, like criminal

behavior. If you take that out of the diagnostic criteria, then you get the same number of boys and girls. And that's what they were advocating for. 25 years ago, and I thought, you people are completely out of your bloody minds, Because the only reason that we ever came up with the diagnosis for childhood conduct disorder was because we were worried that the violent kids would become violent adolescents and that they would become violent adults, which is exactly what happens, by the way, because aggressive behaviors unbelievably stable and difficult to alter. But they were perfectly willing to gerrymandor the diagnostic criteria so that the sex difference disappeared, even though that would completely invalidate the utility of the diagnosis.

And their fundamental claim was the reason that there were more men in prison than women was because it was a form of arbitrary prejudice. And this is absolutely insane. So, you know, it is the case, if you look at domestic violence statistics, by the way, women hit men more than men hit women, just so you know,

it actually doesn't matter mostly. Not that it's pleasant, that isn't what I'm saying, is that men are a lot stronger than women. They have a lot more powerful upper bodies. And so when men hit women, the consequences tend to be very dire, and when women hit men, well, they're less dire. And I'm not saying that it's okay, but I am pointing out that, you know, this does happen. It's not the point. The point is that, you know that we're concerned about criminality

because we don't want violent people attacking other people in the streets, disrupting the harmony of society and generally corrupting the integrity of the state. And so we put them in prison. And most of them are men. It's like 10 to 15 to one. And it's like that worldwide. Okay, what?

We're gonna do... 50% are now gonna be women? So seriously, look, if the theory is the only goddamn difference between men and women is a consequence of the oppressive social structure. That cuts both ways. And what that means is that if 85% or 90% of the people who are in prison are male, then the prison system is unbelievably prejudiced against men. So we're going to act on that?

And how? That's easy. We lower the standards of criminal behavior for women until we equate the number of men and women who are in prison. Look, that's what you're going to do. Yeah, you know, you think that's funny. That's what happens in the military, especially at the higher ends, you know, in the operations like Navy seals or the places where there's tremendous emphasis on physical readiness. The

only way you can equate by gender is to reduce the performance criteria that the women have to attain. So if you can do it there, then why the hell can't you do it for criminality? If the goal is equality of outcome, where are you going to stop? And that's easy. If the goal is equality of outcome, you stop when the outcomes are equal. And not just the desirable outcomes. You know, you hear about the fact that, well, if you look at the C-sweets of major corporations

that a majority of the people are men. It's like, well, the first thing I think about that is, well, what the hell is your point? It's like, that's hardly anyone, right? 99% of men, 99.9% of men, are not on the sea suites of large corporations. So we're talking about a very tiny proportion of the population, and they're strange people, right? They are, they are, they're not normal people.

And the reason I say that is because, first of all, they're very intelligent most of them. say that is because first of all, they're very intelligent most of them. So that takes the first slice. And the second slice is, all they do is work like 80 hours a week. And not everybody wants to do that. And why should they? It's like whoever said that you should work 80 hours a week. But if you're going to rise to that level in any profession, I don't give a damn what the profession is. If you wanna hit the top one tenth of one percent in your profession, then all you do is work.

And not only do you work, you work hard and efficiently, and you do it better than anyone else. Plus you need the talent and you need the intelligence and you need the lock and you need the health and all the other things that might go along with that. And so the fact that a majority of them happen to be men, that says nothing about the structural, what would you call this?

It says nothing about the fundamental structure of the state as far as I'm concerned. And why are we concentrating only on the upper end? Like, why is it that it's the CEOs that count and not the brick layers? You know, and there's all sorts of things we can talk about with regards to that. That's straightforward. Okay, so what's the difference between men and women with regards to occupation?

Okay, men are way more likely to work outside. Okay, so now half the women who work outside, half the people who work outside have to be women. Men are way more likely to work in dangerous jobs. They're overwhelmingly more likely to be injured and killed on the job. It's like, okay, time to equate for that. I don't know exactly how we're gonna do that.

Maybe we just injure women randomly till it's equal or we force them to take the jobs. And I don't know how we do that. Okay, men are way more likely to move. That's another thing. They're also much more likely to work longer hours. Women are way more likely to work part time that's particularly true by the way in Scandinavia.

And the reason they do that is because, well, they hit their 30s, early 30s usually, and they think, especially often if they're successful, I've seen this happen with women all the time. So I worked with women in law firms really unbelievably accomplished women because the firms would send us their best performers and our job was to see if we could make them a little bit more productive because if they were high performers and they were even 5% more productive, it was unbelievably valuable for the company.

And so all the law firms, they just lose all their women in their 30s. And it happens everywhere. And the reason it happens is very straightforward, and all the female lawyers know this. They won't talk about it publicly, but they all know it. They did very well in high school. Then they did very well in university. Then they did very well in law school. Then they did very well in university. Then they did very well in law school. Then they went in article.

Then they did extremely well as article, as article in students. Then they got hired as associates and did very well. And then they made partner. And it was just like linear progression. And there was a lot of questioning that went along with it because most of the people who do that are very conscientious. So they're duty bound.

And so, you know, they hit it, they have a name. And they just execute, man, they execute. And conscientiousness, by the way, is the best predictor of success in law after intelligence. And so you have to be a conscientious person, detail-oriented. And so if you happen to be a woman like that, extraordinarily hardworking, very, very bright,

you just make a B-line to partnership. But then you're 30. That's a problem. And it's a problem for a bunch of reasons. The first is, you've hit the target and now you're surrounded by these guys and women who are partners. And you thought that was a hell of a fine place to be. But when you get there, you find out that a hell of a fine place to be, but when you get there you find out that it's rough, it's aggressive, it's competitive, it can be nasty, and most of the people who are doing it are not happy. It's hard work. I've met lawyers who like what they're doing, but they're rare. It's very competitive and it's very harsh, and you're going to work, man. If your pants

get paid $750 an hour, you're working whenever there's work to do, no matter what else you have to do. And you know, you might be making $350,000, $400,000 a year, and that's good, but you're probably married to someone who's making approximately the same amount of money. So you actually don't need that much money, and you certainly don't need more. You might want it, but you don't need it. And then you start thinking, why the hell would anyone in the right mind do this? Which is the right question, by the way, to ask about the people who sit in the sea suites in major corporations. It's like, they're working 70, 80s hours a week for 30 or 40 years,

you know, that often they sacrifice their families for it and everything else. And they're a particular kind of person who does that, usually hyper conscientious. But like the question, why you would do that is a really good question. How about you have a life? How about you have a partner that you see some time?

How about you have some children that you actually get to see and take care of? And so then you think, well, maybe I don't need to work 80 hours a week to continue my rise through the upper stratosphere of the law profession. I'll pull back, I'll find an eight hour a day job or a part-time job, and I'll have a family. Well, that's what's happening in Scandinavia.

Is that okay? Or not. And if it's not okay, what are we going to do? We're going to enforce gender equality there, too, are we? You know, they've enforced gender equality at the board level in the Scandinavian countries. It hasn't made a goddamn bit of difference to the number of women who are in management positions in Scandinavia. And the reason for that was that wasn't the problem. It wasn't systemic oppression.

There's a multitude of reasons that men and women take different pathways in their careers, and they're becoming more evident. Another one is that women, so women are different, higher in negative emotion, higher in agreeableness, both the same in conscientiousness, openness, and extroversion. There's some differences, but they're relatively minor. Pretty much the same in terms of intelligence. Doesn't look like it's an ability issue for most professions

with the exception of the extended male variability hypothesis that might have to do with like upper-level mathematical genius. But we can leave that aside aside because it's debatable. There is a different, another difference between men and women, and this is the biggest difference that psychologists have discovered. And that's of interest. Men are more interested in things on average, and women are more interested in people on average.

And the difference is actually quite big. It's one standard deviation, which means that, it's a little more than that, which means that if you were a man as interested in people, as the typical woman is interested in people, you would have to be more interested in people than 85% of men. And if you were a woman who is interested in things as the average man is interested in things, you'd have to be more interested in things than 85 percent of women. So it's actually quite a big difference.

And so, thing interest is a big determination of interest in the STEM fields. And women just aren't that interested in things. Now, some of them are and they go into the STEM fields, but most of them aren't. So what are you going to do about that? So one of the things they're trying to do in the Scandinavian countries is they're going to really start to socialize boys and girls different in preschool. Okay, so that's good. So that's what you're going to is it this is the idea You're gonna discount the notion entirely that there might actually be differences between men and women Even though that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but we're gonna discount that and we're gonna assume that all the differences in Outcome or a consequence of systemic and oppression and Then we're going to give enough power to this state so that they're going to transform

the way that our children are treated when they're three and four by teachers, by preschool teachers. And we're going to try to rejag the entire culture predicated on that theory. That's the solution. Well, if you don't think that that's a totalitarian solution, then you are not thinking. And this is the last one. I'll answer a little ornery about these questions tonight, apparently. What do you think of our state government's teaching gender fluidity concepts to primary school children?

This is what I think. I think if your damn primary school teachers knew how to teach kids to read, they wouldn't have to bother teaching gender fluidity. If you found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up Dad's books, maps of meaning the architecture of belief, or as newer bestseller, 12 rules for life and antidote to chaos. Both of these works delve much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. See JordanBeePeterson.com for audio, e-book, and text links, or pick up the books at your

favorite bookseller. Remember to check out JordanBe Peterson dot com slash personality for information on his new course. Tag Jordan or I on Instagram to share your results from the discovering personality course. I really hope you enjoyed this podcast. Talk to you next week. Follow me on my YouTube channel, Jordan B. Peterson, on Twitter, at Jordan B. Peterson,

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